Saint Ghost

Ava Rose is an American musician, writer, librarian, politician, socialist revolutionary, and sculptor. She is known for her rather quiet demeanor as well as her leftist political views. She became a popular figure in the Flex Entertainment community during Eras 2 & 3, albeit never released anything until 2022 with her EP "Happy Anniversary" going under the name Blueberry Bandit.

Although still somewhat a controversial figure due to her involvement in the "Darkest Day" and troublesome relationship with the label thereafter, the general consensus on Ava is a lot more positive in recent times with the community and her apologizing for their mistakes. Though some still don’t care for her very much, she doesn’t mind. She largely keeps away from the label, both for her own well being and generally changing interest. However, she does check in from time to time, and is close friends with label founder Yung Schmoobin.

Pre-Flexing Life
Ava was born on September 7 to a middle class family in her obscure corner of the earth, and has lived there the majority of her life. Born male, she now identifies as a woman. She was one of Flex Entertainment’s first transgender representation.

Early Interactions with Flex
“Somethings just turn out odd, and you have to deal with them” - Ava Rose, in reference to something completely different

Ava’s first interaction with Flex Entertainment came on the website Album of the Year, when she made a negative review of Yung Schmoobin’s ‘YouTube Money Mixtape’ which resulted in a lighthearted dialogue between the two. She continued to review Flex material on the website. A few months later on December 27, 2019, Mosquito reached out to Ava to ask for advice on how to improve the music of the label, assuming Ava was an expert of sorts. Foolish assumption. Shortly after joining, Ava accidently signed to Flex Entertainment, before quickly getting out of her “contract.”. Quite possibly, the shortest career of any Flex Entertainment musician (before Mick Riva's stint as an artist would break the record). Though Ava would remain friendly with the community for a little afterwards.

Further Developments with Flex
Ava quickly established herself as a constant figure in Flex-related discourse and particularly, in voice calls. Being drawn to the label’s “dadaist” nature, and DIY aesthetic. Though she was uncomfortable with being too closely associated with the label, stating she felt it was a bad idea for her own music career. She was awarded the mod role on the Discord server sometime in mid-2020, making her the only non-Flex member at the time to have this role. This caused some slight in-fighting with fellow mod J Coyn Drive, though nothing too serious. Around this time, she briefly was signed again under the name “Noir” as a beat producer alias, though she quickly abandoned it. There are no known songs or beats under the Noir moniker. Briefly a member of the short-lived quality control team, an odd attempt to make Flex more professional. However, Ava supported Schmoobin's idea to abolish it in early August 2020. While this originally caused tension with Mosquito, he eventually came around to it.

Around this time, Lil Squeaky became more active presence in voice calls, and originally Ava and Squeaky got along well. Ava liked Squeaky’s absurdist humor, and Squeaky seemingly found Ava’s presence enjoyable enough. After a while however, the two of them began to clash over their political beliefs. The two reached an impasse on August 15, when Squeaky and his close friend J Coyn Drive made an offensive and off-putting joke in a short-lived Second Flex server which caused the two to stop talking to each other.

The "darkest day" and aftermath
On August 20th, 2020, after an argument between Schmoobin and Mosquito in a voice call, Schmoobin left the server temporarily. Mosquito said he “didn’t care what anyone thought about him” and “won’t let it get to him.” After saying the remark was inspired by Lil Squeaky's advice on confidence, Ava would respond calling Squeaky a "racist bigot". The call would end shortly after with both being frustrated and angry. Ava would later be demoted from the server for the reasons of "causing controversy" and be subsequently berated by several Flex members.

The mentioned incident and further falling out would lead Yung Schmoobin to depart from the label alongside other reasons. Schmoobin and Ava would get to know each other better as a result of their similar circumstances in relation to the label. Ava would became a symbol of quality control and AOTY critics by association although being against the quality control team and the more "professional aspects of Flex". Phrases like “mixing and mastering” became associated with Ava.

Harassment
Around November of 2020, Ava started getting messages on Discord near-daily from various unknown Discord accounts. These messages largely consisted of transphobic comments, inside jokes, and other odd things. Some of them even featured gifs of Hitler. The exact person or people behind these accounts are still largely unknown, although there have been several suspects. Ava would call this experience traumatic. Although attempts were made to contact Mosquito to fix the situation, action wasn't taken properly due to a lack of information of the time until around May when more details of the situation were brought to light resulting in proper action being taken and the issue being resolved permanently.

An inside joke on the server started to spread, several users in the "Gifposter" scene started using sexually explicit gifs and images of a TikToker named Ava Rose. This slowly would result in sexual harassment being sent her way, both intentional and unintentional. Often involving one-sided erotic roleplaying, both in DM and in the public server (the roleplays in the server would become known as 'stories'). While obviously, these are two different Ava Roses, it seemed as if the mind of whoever was doing this had projected one Ava onto the other. Either that, or somehow thought they were one in the same. Ava would make up with J Coyn and Yung Garfield around this time as they made temporary departures from Flex and went back to being on good terms with them.

After several months of this, an unpleasant “apology” was made by Flex Entertainment on May 11, 2021. This was not accepted by Ava Rose. Executive Yung Lambo started messaging Ava, trying to persuade her into a call to settle their differences and she furiously refused, saying the only way for things to get better was for Flex to “get out of her life.” Lambo asked for evidence that she had been harassed, and when shown Yung Lambo sent it to Mosquito and the rest of the Flex staff, who made an announcement to stop this behavior. The harassment would stop after this and additional measures to remove artists that were caught engaging in the aforementioned behavior of telling stories. She took some time away from the internet to improve her mental health.

Reconciliation with Flex
Mosquito and Ava eventually made up in July of 2021. Though making it clear that she had no interest in rejoining the label. Mosquito was largely understanding, and apologized a number of times. It was a small, but welcoming ending to an odd period in Flex history. In January 2022 Ava asked for an invite to the server saying she missed the place. She rejoined the server to a hesitant but welcoming reception. She has since left and returned to the server a number of times, checking in every once in awhile. She has since become known for spamming "trans pride" gifs in general.

Interests and Passions
Ava is known for having a conflicting taste in Flex Entertainment history. She has a love of jazz, regional folk music, and “experimental music”. Ava once stated in a Flex call that “all music is brilliant” and credits Flex for helping her understand that. Her listening habits are quite active, saying that she almost always has something playing unless she needs her ears for something (such as Discord calls). Ava is a self-taught pianist, and considers her playing as a student of jazz. She has credits Thelonious Monk and Phillip Glass as influences on playing. She also owns, but barely knows how to play a guitar and a saxophone.

On top of music, Ava has a keen interest in the other arts. Most notably, literature. Since 2019, she has maintained a book collection of 50+ books, consisting largely of philosophy books, biographies, religious texts, and leftist political theory, among other things. She also has a large passion for painting, philosophy, social science, world history, and spirituality. She has been quoted as saying “if I could visit every country for a week or so while being completely secure in my safety, I would.”

Ava’s Reading List:
While writing this section, Ava wanted to give a little mention to some of her favorite books. However, the list expanded to such a growth that it would be silly to not make it its own section. She added a little note for each of them. These books all changed her life..

- Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s ‘The Disordered Cosmos’ (2021): Finds the intersection between the cosmos and human identity, and It’s glorious. Maybe the most important book of the 21st century so far..

- Frantz Fanon’s ‘Black Skins, White Masks’ (1952): An essential reading for any one who wants to understand systematic racism and alienation from a more personal, psychological perspective. Not to say it’s more broad critiques aren’t also dripping with brilliance, of course.

- Yuen Ren Chao’s ‘How to Cook and Eat in Chinese’ (1945): Despite its title, it is more than a cookbook! Albeit, it does function as one. However, it’s about understanding, cultural exchange, and the simple joys of life. Some days I wake up and it’s my favorite book.

- W. E. B. Du Bois’s ‘The Souls of Black Folk’ (1903): A fundamental work in American literature. Godspeed!

- Peter Kropotkin - ‘The Conquest of Bread’ (1892): Obvious one is obvious one is obvious one is obvious...

Political Beliefs
“Facts may not care about your feelings, but I do!” - Ava Rose,

Ava is very outspoken on her leftist political beliefs. She credits YouTubers Philosophy Tube and Innuendo Studios, as well the "disappointing" outcome of the 2016 election, for opening her up to a world of “humanitarianist politics.” Ava identifies as a democratic socalist and a libertarian socalist, though she’s not too eager on political labels. She’s also a supporter and sometimes an active participant in civil rights movements.

She has called the works of contemporary right-wing thinkers Ben Shaprio and Jordan Peterson “silly and dishonest” and shown an active disinterest in them, though she does worry about their influence in modern political discourse. Ben, in particular, she’s criticized for being anti-science while hollowing claiming to be the factual and rational ones, largely regarding man-made climate change and transgender identity. She also disapproves of the Christian right, calling it hypocritical and largely in opposition to what Jesus actually taught.

Ava held a strong distaste for 45th U.S. President Donald Trump, calling him an ultranationalist and the worst kind of right-wing populist. She supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries, before reluctantly giving her support to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Ava has largely disapproved of the 46th president’s administration, writing “in a time where change needs to happen immediately and swiftly, Biden is the disappointing return to the status quo that we all knew he would be.” She later stated “The Democratic Party is not the party of the ‘left’ nor the party of change, it’s the party of the system that leaves millions of Americans to live their life in a vapid, unconscious existence.”

Trivia

 * Ava was baptized as a very young child, though she has no recollection of it. She currently identifies as a universalist agnostic.
 * Ava was blocked by academic fraud James Lindsay on Twitter, and that’s pretty funny. She never spoke to him.
 * An in-joke in 2020 started regarding Ava's love for "Russian folk music." This was after she played the song 'The Rain' by Eddie Gale, which is neither Russian nor folk music.
 * Ava is really gay.